Tricia Booker: The Place of Peace and Crickets (Memoir – Review)

“The Place of Peace and Crickets: how adoption, heartache, and love built a family”

is brutal, honest, loving and a masterpiece of a memoir. Booker goes in deep, where most of us would never dare to go, she bares her soul. Adopting three children after the agonizing discovery that they could have no children through the usual birth method (!), she finds life isn’t all Johnson and Johnson baby lotion moments. If you’ve ever held a baby, you know the moment I mean, the cuddly chubby bug filled with good smells and coo’s, when everything is right with the world and there is peace.

The book jacket:

“When journalist Tricia Booker and her husband had trouble conceiving, they follow the well-worn footsteps of couples exploring in-vitro fertilization. (Booker covers this with agonizing clarity, she puts us right in her place and makes us visit some uncomfortable truths.) Two years and thousands of dollars later, they decided to have a long fulfilling life — without children. (Boy, does this ever change!)

Instead, they become immersed in the world of international adoption. Their first child, born in Vietnam, introduced them to a poor but loving orphanage where infants slept with their caretakers. (This lulled them into a wonderful place of peace and love, but just wait …)

Then came Guatemala, a beautiful, impoverished (to say the least) country where Booker’s two younger children lived in tiny cribs with little human interaction. (Heartbroken and frustrated, it takes years to get the children into their home in the US)

In candid, raw prose, Booker tells the story of her family, including her son’s diagnosis of Anxious-Attachment Disorder, the service dog she trained to help him, and her and her husband’s chaotic attempts to simplify their lives in order to heal their son.”

What this book really is? It’s a love story. A couple deeply committed to each other and totally in love. And their deep abiding love of their adopted children and their determination to make it right for all three of them. It’s a rare and enchanting story that grabs you and won’t let you go — I read it in one sitting.

Misconceptions about adoption abound, but seem especially prevalent in areas lacking racial diversity, like the suburb where I live. Because I am raising brown children, I have more reason to notice the area’s innate whiteness. Curiosity regarding my kids’ origin is to be expect, I suppose. But people often feel entitled to question me about our familial history based on one factor: race. My children have been examined from afar fro the entirety of their lives simply because they have brown skin and I don’t. From the beginning, I fought against it, and rebuffed attempts by strangers to extract my family’s story with a Miss Manners-approved polite, weary, smile and incredulous look that discouraged further questioning. I have always been proud of my children’s heritage, and proud of how our family came to be. I happily talk about adoption in the appropriate setting and, can blather on endlessly about our diverse household and our allegiance to multiculturalism. But asking me specifics about how my child came to be an orphan — in front of my child –– well, just go away. Or tell me how and when you child was conceived, and whether you had an orgasm that night. Really, it’s that offensive. [p130]

Straight from the gut, Booker brings us into her life and won’t let us leave without a firm grasp of her truth. And we might shed a few tears along with her as we journey through the Booker’s reality.

Buy a copy of this rare gem of a memoir. Buy a second copy to give as a gift.